The world’s their oyster

Camera IconMerv and Jan at Pontcysyllte aqueduct, Llangollen, north Wales.

From Mandurah to Machu Picchu, the bucket list never ends for globetrotting Jan and Merv Crowe, writes Gemma Nisbet.

Travel has been a lifelong passion for Jan and Merv Crowe, from driving around and sleeping in the back of their Land Rover when they were first married, to family trips to the US or UK, to more recent adventures around Australia in their campervan.

Indeed, as Merv puts it: “Travel’s what we do.”

Travel was also a career for Belfast-born Merv, who worked in the aviation industry for decades until he retired two years ago, including many years with Ansett, which gave the couple the opportunity to travel frequently and cheaply when their three children were young.

Perhaps for that reason, a degree of spontaneity has characterised their travels, be it a family trip to Hong Kong over a long weekend when their children were small to more forays around WA from the Goldfields to the Great Southern.

“Sometimes I’ll just think, tomorrow’s a lovely day, let’s go down to Mandurah or Busselton, or let’s go across to Kellerberrin or somewhere like that, and we just head off,” Merv says.

Since the pair retired, they’ve bought a modest 15-year-old campervan, which they took last year on a 12,000km trip across the Nullarbor to visit friends and family in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, the Gold Coast and Brisbane.

“We met a few people who were amazed we could actually do that many miles in it,” Jan says.

Their next trip will be another in the campervan, this time driving up to the Kimberley to visit their son and his family in Broome before heading to Kununurra and Wyndham.

But, as Merv says: “We’re equally happy travelling intrastate, interstate and overseas, and we do a mixture of all.” In the past, they’ve been everywhere from Canada and New Zealand to France, Norway and the Netherlands to Central America and, a few years ago, Chile, Peru and Bolivia.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Machu Picchu since I can remember,” Merv says. “You can see it on TV but once you get there, it’s just magnificent.”

While their travels have nearly always been organised independently — “we tend to just do it on our own and we just hire a car,” Merv says — in recent years they’ve come to see they might appreciate the security and efficiency of organised tours, particularly in a destination they might be less confident to visit on their own.

And indeed they’re currently discussing the possibility of a tour to South Africa. They also have a trip planned to Colombia for their son’s wedding next year, to be followed by a holiday to Cuba.

Beyond that, there are still plenty of destinations that fit the couple’s main criteria of “somewhere we haven’t been before”.

Merv has always wanted to visit Portugal, Spain and Gibraltar, while Sweden, Finland and perhaps Russia are also on the cards. Jan fancies Germany and Italy, not to mention travelling by rail across Canada.

“To be honest, we would see the whole world if we could,” she says. “We would go everywhere.”